... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about. Flannery O'Connor More Quotes by Flannery O'Connor More Quotes From Flannery O'Connor I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear. Flannery O'Connor dumb people needs There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. Flannery O'Connor stories writing fall Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me. Flannery O'Connor retention burden Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute. Flannery O'Connor relative absolutes levels To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. Flannery O'Connor hearing figures blind I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it. Flannery O'Connor tongue credit humorous People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience. Flannery O'Connor writing long people I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it. Flannery O'Connor half overcoming writing Conviction without experience makes for harshness. Flannery O'Connor harshness conviction experience Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will. Flannery O'Connor ocean fall thinking Once the process [of conversion] is begun and continues...you are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity...you have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that. Flannery O'Connor selfish faith order I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. Flannery O'Connor doubt believe thinking In yourself right now is all the place you've got. Flannery O'Connor independence right-now self-esteem I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. Flannery O'Connor reading grace writing Sickness is a place, ... and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow. Flannery O'Connor company sickness It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much. Flannery O'Connor get-away writing fiction Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not. Flannery O'Connor literature faith believe Ours is the first age in history which has asked the child what he would tolerate learning. Flannery O'Connor age children firsts Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics. Flannery O'Connor catholic giving believe When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures. Flannery O'Connor vision talking mean
